Senate transportation plan heads to house

Texas senators Thursday morning quickly sent a plan to direct about $1 billion to fix Texas highways, but officials are expecting a slower and more contested conversation in the House.

The transportation funding plan, SJR 1, drafted by Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, takes half of the money currently going to the state’s rainy day fund raised by oil production taxes and shifts it to highway maintenance and construction. To appease concerns from House and Senate members, the plan also sets a minimum for how much money is guaranteed to go to the rainy day fund, and stipulates none of the new money can be used to incur more debt.

Voters will have the final say about the funding change, as it requires a constitutional amendment. The item would likely appear on the November ballot.

First, it has to gain enough support in the House, which in the prior special session passed the bill, but with reservations. Some of those concerns reappeared earlier this week, when House lawmakers discussed the version of Nichols’ bill coming from the House, HJR 1. Texas Tribune said Rep. Sylvester Turner in particular questioned some of the specifics.

Turner, D-Houston, vice chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said he worried about a safeguard in the bill that was intended to keep the balance in the Rainy Day Fund from falling too low.

Turner said that the minimum amount of money the fund must maintain would start at more than $4 billion, would rise to more than $5 billion in 2015 and would continue to increase over time. At some point in the future, the minimum amount needed in the fund would rise so high, Turner said, that no money from it would be allocated to roads.

“I am very uncomfortable with that because you have a perpetual savings account that becomes very, very difficult to touch,” Turner said in an interview.